ePOST
Serverless Email System

A Peer-to-Peer Platform for Reliable, Secure Communication

Introduction

ePOST is a cooperative, serverless email system. Each user contributes
a small amount of storage and network bandwidth in exchange for access
to email service. ePOST provides

A serverless, peer-to-peer email service

Secure email emong ePOST users

An organically scaling service that requires no dedicated
hardware

Very high availability and data durability

Compatibility with POP/IMAP clients, SMTP mail servers

Why Did We Build ePOST?

Peer-to-peer systems have gained wide popularity, partially due to
their self-scaling properties and their resilience to failures.
However, most existing peer-to-peer systems provide best-effort
services, whose availability is not critical to their users. A
question is whether peer-to-peer systems can provide service that users
depend on in their daily lives and work. We deployed ePOST
to show that a cooperative peer-to-peer system can provide
availability, reliability and security that matches or exceeds
that of server-based solutions, while reducing hardware cost and
administrative overhead.

How Can I Use ePOST?

The ePOST project is no longer under active development. You can still download the ePOST sources and setup your own ring by following the directions on the Download page. ePOST supports Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux running on java versions 1.4.2 or greater.